Existing in a world of cruelty

All of the awful things about life are just eating me alive at this point.

For example, I’m shopping at Winco, which is fine and I’m glad I have money for food and the like. I know my life is privileged despite how depressed I feel all the time. But as I round the corner at the shelf-stable non-dairy milks, there sits a huge pile of low-grade, generic dog food in massive bags on a pallet. Plain white bags, with DOG FOOD stamped on the front in huge letters. There’s a drawing of the dog on the front, and even he looks super depressed, as if he knows his days are numbered because of malnutrition. And I just think, why even continue living in a world where some poor dog has to eat this junk day in and day out?

And that makes me think about all the animals forced to live in even worse misery, animals who will be slaughtered by the thousands all through the night and all through tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next. Feeling, thinking animals being turned into toppings for cheap frozen pizzas and fast food. What a waste. And the people eating that garbage, distasteful as their habits may be, are probably lonely people who can’t cook a decent meal or lost the only people in the world willing to cook one for them.

It’s just one thought process like that after the next for me now.

And people can say, “Look on the bright side,” but you know there is no bright side. Existence is a black hole, sucking you in until you finally stop fighting and let the darkness prevail.

I am trying mightily to channel this anguish into a productive project, but awareness brings with it a difficulty in focusing. I can’t un-see what surrounds me. I know my efforts will be a match in a hurricane.